War of Roses
by Draenog Glas
Summary: Two forgotten soldiers are found dead in the fields of Berlin, soon replaced by a covering of poppies and roses. The only thing some haven't forgotten, was their love, and their dedication to preserve their hearts in the soil, as the roses beat together in both the sun and moon. Sonadow, AU, based on World War II.


**A/N: This really sucks, I'm sorry. Definitely not my best work.**

Sullen, sore, bloody, bruised, he had sat in his lone field that was barren and dry and dead for so long, he thought even his eyes would grow dry, stale, swollen, and he continued to gaze upon the moon-kissed night, as the stars continued to envelop the world in its long, silky dress. He thought the maiden of night was beautiful, but sometimes she was an evil mistress, capable of cutting the throats of unguarded victims with its one long white bladed knife at the edge of her belt, and she often wished she could make a long red river be drained from the victim's neck, and she would savor it and let it bleed, let it bleed.

He gazed at his stitches. So red they were. So purple, like the bruises he had collected on his arms. He had experienced a lot of pain on this journey. He had witnessed the birth of a new millennium, the rise of the dawning sun as he could see all the fallen soldiers, all the people that had died during the burst of flame on Nagasaki, and as he looked at his battle scars, he felt they were like childish stickers, something to put on his skin so he could show how tough, how iron-set he was, but as he continued to eat his last can of beans in the cold, widowed night, he felt widowed as well, as a brave soldier had died during the battle field, a soldier he wished he could take with him, into his arms that were now scarred and broken and decayed. He couldn't carry very much with those arms, but try as he might, he could lift him as if he were a small boy, and he thought of how childish their relationship was, because they often talked about what they would do after the war, if it ever ended.

But both of them knew that the war was never going to end. It would continue on, like a leech draining the world for many years and eons. To make sure too much blood wasn't flowing in its ear. So hideous, so black, so sickening was this creature, war, and he knew as well as he did that it wasn't going to end. Not in the next year. Or the next. Or the next.

He touched upon his scarred face, as a bullet wound was inside his chest. It was a red, ghastly hole, revealing all the organs inside his body. His heart, that no longer beat like a bloody drum, was gray and cold and like broken glass, shattered by the lead of one man's gun. He was dead. The fire in his life had gone out. It was now only a widowed wicker of a half-melted candle.

He wished he could dissolve all the way with him. To die together. And he looked at his stitches again, how brazen they were, signs of a still living life trying to contain the opened flesh.

He thought he could die slowly, let all the bacteria and germs rot away his bloody carcass, and he could remain here, with his fallen soldier, and they could rest as the sun would slowly rise up, be ignited by their sorrowful passion, and he wished, too, that he could see him again in the skies above, how delicate and soft the clouds were as he could faintly see them at this time of night, and he wanted to dance in them with the soldier, with their wings no longer folded and broken, but wide open, without their scars, their stitches, their wounds, and they could spend that eternity with each other.

He couldn't shoot himself. That moment was too fast. He would rather die slowly, painfully, as the other soldiers wondered where he had gone. He would rather be a dog that lost its master, lying on its grave, with a sad, sorry look on its face. Sorry that it couldn't stop his death.

His heart was ripe, bleeding, as he delicately held one of his stitches as if it was only a flap he could open to see his dead skin any time, and he ripped it open, the blood coming out of its seams, as he could see a dead memory inside its hole, the blue and yellow and green flowing out of it like a full fountain, overflowing him with reminiscences of his friend, his lover, his fellow comrade in this awful, pissing contest that was war.

He looked as they shared flowers with each other, a bouquet of yellow roses, of red and blue and even a painted rainbow, and they laughed as they shared the bouquets over time, another colorful set of flowers being prized on their mantelpiece, and they would talk and love and share each other secrets and confessions and creations made from their hearts, as the flowers would over time wilt, the water never being enough to sustain them. He suggested they should get a bouquet of fake roses so it could last, but his friend only laughed, and said it would just cheapen them.

"I think a real set of flowers is much better than plastic and felt. It would feel like we're fake, you know? And I don't mind the flowers wilting. I really don't. It means that no matter what hard thing has come by, we will always still be here, together, and never alone. You know that as well as I do. Besides, fake flowers don't smell nice. I always loved the smell of roses. And without that smell, I wouldn't be reminded of how far we've gone, ever since we thought we should be together."

He was lifted out of his seat as his friend held his hand, and an old, delicate song came on the radio, sung by a woman who had the voice of a cigarette stained angel.

"Care to dance, my love?"

He was silent, as he tried to remember the oncoming war with Germany, and he thought he couldn't tell him there was such a strong possibility that they would be drafted. He could already smell the burning scent of bombs and soldiers puking and having dysentery, of the small amount of food they would eat, the rations never seeming enough.

But he danced the night away, as he listened to the fading glow of the stars extinguishing, and he thought morning would soon come on by, and they had spent another night together, without worrying about the war, the war he knew they would enter.

But as he lied in the bed as the sun rose, having sweet dreams of being with him in their small home, with the smell of roses always staining the living room, he thought he wouldn't tell him, probably until it was too late.

The scar was open like a red, blooming flower, like a rose, and he could imagine it popping out of his veins and arteries, a flower that would rise from his heart, a flower he could smell even when he was fully dead, using his body as fertilizer. It bled continuously from its blue stem, as the rising sun made the blood glow in the distant light. It bled through the earth, and he could see the bloody patches of ground begin to be seeded, with more roses, with more poppies.

He opened yet another stitch, hearing the rip, smelling the flowers that were coming out, and he could see yet another memory seeping, like the sun-ripened blood as it was torn out of his body, and he sat and reminisced as the memory grew, a red rose that rose like a fungus, its top not a deadly and poisonous spore, but it unfurled yet more blackened twisted Godless times, as he could hear the train droning out his senses, the train they rode to go to Berlin…

Several men were sick, the train smelling of shit and vomit and piss. He often tried to plug his nose of the pungent scents. His friend remained in the corner, cleaning his gun, and he knew he was wondering why it was them they chose to go into this war, when they had so much going on in their lives, another love-decadent wistful life stomped on by the government, as they thought all men had to go to Germany, in a place that was as lost with its schizophrenic madness as America had been during the Depression.

He unloaded the cartridge. Reloaded it. Unloaded. Reloaded. He couldn't think of anything else to do, as idle hands led to Satan's sins. He chewed on a piece of gum that had already lost its flavor, and he could see tears collecting in his eyes, so red with loss of sleep, with the deaths of so many soldiers being collected in his mind. He never wanted to do something like this. He never counted on it. And he thought these idle hands could kill someone, even thinking of killing himself, if he wasn't so against it in the first place, so against his philosophy of what life truly was.

He just wanted the blood to stop running in this land. He wanted to make the wounds heal.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Sorry isn't enough. We're going to keep being in this war, for as long as many years, for as long as many centuries, aren't we? I don't see it going away any time soon. And I just…I don't know what I would do if you were gone. If any of us were gone. Why didn't you tell me this before? Why didn't you tell me we were going to get drafted?"

The sounds of the train continued to screech in his ears. He wished the ugly sound would go away, and the sound of his friend unloading and reloading his cartridge, and he hoped he could make the war go away with just a breath, an envisioning in his mind, but this was reality, and he couldn't make anything go away like he wanted, until the warring countries decided they had enough, until enough piss was collected for them to put in jars and proudly display to the world like golden trophies.

And enough was a tough question to give to any of them. They continued to want to kill more people, the Jews or anyone else unlucky enough to reach the cross-hairs of their guns.

He sat beside him, slowly, as he handed out to him a colorful array of chocolate candies that he kept in his coat for so long, that they told him they never melted in their hands, but he knew it was because it was so cold in Germany at this time of month. He wanted it to be warm again, but he covered himself in his jacket and knew, again, he couldn't make things happen by wishing. Only God would be the decider of that.

"What are these?"

"I don't know what they're called. They just gave them to us, but basically it's chocolate. Maybe that'll calm you down. You're tense."

He hoped they were actually pills, Haldol in colorful shells, but he ate them, savoring the sweet taste, and he continued to stare outside of the boxed train, seeing the city becoming closer, closer to their deaths.

He swallowed, his throat feeling scratchy and as barren as the desert they used to be in, the chocolate river feeling like barbed wire. He hadn't had a real drink of anything other than water in so long, he thought he was beginning to have hallucinations yet again when he tried to quit alcohol what seemed to be years ago, the drink that used to soothe him of any event that had shook him down to his long wicked bones, and he anticipated for anything to deal with this terrible tundra of turpentine white, even a long, thick bottle of vodka or merlot wine.

However, his friend gazed upon him with heavy eyes. He knew the drinking had to stop, he had to experience these hallucinations, these months of near-death and throwing up and wishing that his friend would never be hurt in this war, he wished he could drink it all away, like he once wanted to, for so long…

"No, don't think of that time. Focus on me. Focus on right now. We have to get through this. There's nothing we can do to escape it. And if you thought about killing yourself how would that make me feel? Don't think that way. We can do it. We can do it…" He repeated those words to himself, until his brain had grown old and sore of hearing them.

He reloaded the cartridge again as the train soon screeched to a near stop, the rest of the soldiers walking away from them. He could run away, he never had to use this gun to kill other people. He could grow thick, long wings like a snowy owl and fly away from Berlin and come back to America, back in their warm, starry home with its Christmas decorations and the warm little Jesus in their backyard he told him to put on even if he knew they couldn't believe in a God after this.

The storm grew, the paint becoming more luxurious, like Dura-Luxe oil buckets, as they were wrapped in snow, their coats not warm enough to keep them away from the frigid reality of what war was: the eighth layer of Hell, where this man that was killing so many innocent people belonged, and they had to kill him. There was no possible way they could ignore him and have their eyes so blind to the bloodshed he wreathed in this country, a red Christmas with thick arteries coating his door.

"I don't want to go," he said. "I'd rather stay at home with you, with those red roses, the yellow roses, the blue roses…"

"Nothing we can do now. Come on. I don't like this as much as you, but…"

He looked at his desolate face, the tears nearly frozen, the gun nearly slipping from his gloved fingers. He wanted to take them away. But war was never sentimental.

He patted his back, his hand firmly latched onto his shoulders, and they went inside the city, feeling warm. A little safe. His tears continued to spill. He imagined roses seeping from the snow, blue ones, as they often grew with misery. Misery had more company than two lone men trying to fight a war they knew they couldn't win.

He felt sick, distraught, broken, disfigured. He lied in the dirt, as the flowers continued to grow from his red badges of cowardliness, and he tore open one more stitch, the final one that he knew would kill him, as another memory had grown, a tall, rainbow painted rose, and he sat quietly, his breathing becoming slower, as he breathed in all the bodies of the dead men, the blood they cut from their torso with their long white bladed knives that glowed in the night, and the gunpowder and bullets, and sighed slowly, his final undulation ominous. His heart began to sink into the earth, becoming nothing more but a seed.

They had spent their vacation in Paris, sharing a kiss under the mistletoe. They were happy, jubilant, their faces smiling wide like open trenches, like black scars. They looked at the golden orbs all over the city, decorated on the horizon like Christmas lights, and they sucked in all their inspiration like a flower growing in the soil, and they bloomed with pride, happiness, and they talked to each other, saying that one day, when they lived for many years, when they were about 80, they would try to get married, as the countries they all visited never approved of them and their relationship, but as his friend had said, "Well, I think we better damn well try, don't you think?"

And they laughed merrily, as their fingers joined with their own little open spaces on their hands, and their faces were red with frost, and he he could laugh too, as they continued to drink so much wine, eat so much good food, and he thought nothing could break them apart, not even the war that was rising in many countries away from them.

"Do you think we really can live here one day? And we can have a nice house that will always have rose bushes growing in the front, a rose garden in the back? Because I would really like that. I would like that more than anything."

And he thought he couldn't keep promises too well, especially with his last relationship with a French woman when he last came here, but he thought if his job was enough to pay for this trip and more, he could certainly try living here, getting a freelance job, while his friend could do anything he wished, though he said he would like to work too, despite his little understanding of the French language.

Their scarves never seemed enough to warm them, their faces flushed and their frozen breaths collecting on the windowpanes of the French shops with elaborate lettering and designs. As they got closer, their noses meeting, he thought he could feel his own heart beating out of his cold, frail body. He said he would try to quit drinking, and so far, he was defeating it, but he sometimes threw up, was very susceptible to the cold, and often shook like a baby's rattle. He tried to stay inside the house, dealing with his withdrawal on his own, but he made him go to France, where they could appreciate each other more, in the city of love.

"Are you trying to not drink as much, at least?"

He spied on the green glass bottles of the exotic wines, so lovely in their golden sprays as they were spilled onto the tall glasses, and he wanted to come over and lavishly drink them before the customer could have one, and he tried to contain his head of all the memories he had while drinking, both the awful, both the good, and they were faint, only a drop in the pool of his blackened pit, he thought he would be honest with him, that he still thought of drinking till his mind was gone, until he was no longer a hedgehog, but a monster that drank nothing and fed on nothing but wine and vodka.

"You shouldn't do that. You know it. That's why she left you."

"No, she left me because I wasn't interested in her. You know that. You know how we are."

He gazed at the stars, the long silky dress that the maiden of the night had worn, and he thought of how lovely, how beautiful she was in Paris. In America, she wasn't as extravagant, as wondrous as she was here. Maybe the night had always been born in France. Maybe it was invented by the French, rather than God.

"But you really have to be careful, Sonic. You can't, just…"

He wanted him to be okay for once. He wished his drinking was under control, that one drop didn't leave him to drinking two bottles of red wine, but he told himself not to cry, when the night was shining for him so translucently. Sonic wrapped his scarf around him, the felt feeling so warm around his neck, as the snow began to fall like a child playing with powdered sugar.

"I'll be okay. I promise, Shadow. I promise."

He remembered that a few years later, he didn't drink yet another sip of wine again, despite the God-awful trials of having no alcohol running in his red rivers, but as soon as the war was born and had affected him, he wanted another drink, but yet he only had one glass of brandy with water in that long, hideous course they had encountered, and he was now dead, dead by gunfire, as he watched the rising sun, as he watched the rising mushroom cloud coming from an ocean away, and he lied, his body bloody and coarse and gray, as he let the flowers from his heart, from his wounds, bloom in the light of the scarlet sun, the roses as reddened, as bloody as it, and he died away, as a field of roses and poppies grew in their eternal slumber, Sonic's rose always swaying, always beating, with his, the heart seed that had dived in the earth, in the wake of melancholy.

The roses seemed so pale in the light, like snow-stricken faces, but they glowed in the warm light of the moon, the mistress that had kissed them for a safe journey in the skies.

Their names were forgotten, as they were in their story, until their love had enveloped them like petals of a rose. But the roses, they were remembered being among the fields of poppies, especially the one that shined in so many different colors, they had remained there despite the death of time.


End file.
